Toronto police are urging the mayor to get a driver, even though they will not be investigating after a picture began circulating on Twitter of the mayor reading while driving.

“On behalf of all the citizens of Toronto that value road safety, Mr. Mayor… please get a driver,” Sergeant Tim Burrows wrote on the Toronto police’s Facebook page. “It is obvious that you are busy enough to require one and no amount of money you are saving by not having one is worth the life of one of your citizens.”

Facebook

The post was later modified and the last sentence was removed.

Mark Pugash, spokesman for the Toronto Police, said he had instructed Sgt. Burrows to remove the “inappropriate” sentence.

“It’s not for us to lecture people,” said Mr. Pugash. “That’s not our job.”

Toronto police Constable Marco Ricciardi also re-tweeted Avery Nathens, Director of Trauma at St. Michael’s Hospital and Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto, saying:

“Mayor Ford, I invite you to visit our trauma unit & see the result of distracted driving.”

Mr. Pugash said the distracted driving laws only cover electronic devices. Last week, police charged a 63-year-old woman with careless driving in Woodstock after an officer spotted her reading a book while driving at 100 kilometres per hour on Hwy 401.

However, Mr. Pugash said the two cases were entirely different and that an offence is only considered in the context of all related circumstances like speed, time of day and location.

Constable Clint Stibbe said reading is no different from changing radio stations while driving, and there will be no investigation launched because there is no evidence that Mr. Ford broke any laws. Const. Stibbe said evidence such as excessive braking, speeding or a collision are needed.

[np-related]

Messages to the mayor’s office for his reaction to the police statement were not returned.

The mayor did not deny that he was reading while driving. At a press conference this morning about his upcoming trip to Chicago to strengthen business ties between Toronto and Chicago, a reporter told the mayor that a picture of him reading and driving on the Gardiner Expressway was circulating on Twitter. When asked if it really was him, Mr. Ford answered flatly:

Yea probably. I’m busy. I try to catch up on work and, you know, I keep my eyes on the road, but I’m a busy man

“Yea probably. I’m busy. I try to catch up on work and, you know, I keep my eyes on the road, but I’m a busy man… I don’t know what that has to do with the trade mission, but anyways. Ridiculous questions sometimes, seriously.”

“Mayor Ford” started trending on Twitter soon after this admission.

One of Mr. Ford’s aides interrupted reporters at the conference to say there was time for only one more question.

According to the CBC, the photo was tweeted by @RyanGHaughton who later tweeted that “the picture was taken around 10am while on the Gardner [sic] and traffic was moving at about 70 km heading eastbound just by Jameson.”

In the picture, Rob Ford is behind the wheel of his Cadillac Escalade looking at some printed ‘Letter-size’ papers in his right hand. His left hand is not visible in the picture.

Early Tuesday afternoon, @RyanGHaughton deleted his tweets about the picture, then closed his account itself prompting questions on social media sites if he was also driving while taking the picture.

This is not the first time Mr. Ford’s driving practices have come under public scrutiny.

The first incident happened last July when a woman said Mr. Ford gave her the middle finger after she and her six-year-old daughter admonished him for driving and talking on his cell phone with a thumbs-down gesture. The mayor called the incident a misunderstanding.

In October, a Toronto resident claimed to have seen Mr. Ford dialling and talking on his cell phone while the mayor was driving near Dundas Street and Spadina Street.

Earlier this summer in June, a streetcar driver accused Mr. Ford of illegally driving past a streetcar’s open doors at Dundas Street and McCaul Street. In that incident, Mr. Ford admitted to driving past the streetcar’s rear doors which he said were closed, but that he stopped behind the streetcar’s front doors.

The mayor has repeatedly turned down requests from his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, to get a driver like previous mayors before him.

During the conference, Mr. Ford said he was very excited to be travelling to Chicago from September 18 to 20. He will be travelling with George Cohon, the founder of McDonald’s in Canada and Russia, and Robert Deluce, chief executive at Porter Airlines.

It is not known if Mr. Ford, who was reportedly convicted of drunk driving in Florida in 1999, will be driving while in Chicago. Isaac Ransom, spokesman for the mayor’s office, said the trip is still a month away and that such details are still being planned.

“I don’t know the logistics of that portion of it yet and I can’t speculate at this point.”

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